I’m a cop and I keep getting called to the same house Part 5
UPDATE: Wednesday August 15, 2018 I became obsessed with trying to figure out where a safe could possibly be on Patch Lane. I woke up early Tuesday morning and threw some food in a bowl for Hallie before racing out of my house. "Don't worry Hallie, mom will be home later." She meowed goodbye in response, brushed along my leg, and trotted over to the couch to curl up and wait for my return. It's so damn hard to leave her now, she's filled a void in my heart I didn't know existed. I headed over to my dad's. I didn't call him ahead of time since he's just down the road and I stop in all the time. As I was pulling up, I saw Tim's truck parked in my dad's driveway. Not very surprised since they're good friends and today is Tim's day off as well, so they tend to catch up on Tuesdays or Wednesdays over a cigar on the back deck. I was actually really glad Tim was there because I had some more questions I wanted to run by him as well. My dad greeted me with his famous bear hug and Tim gave me a nod of the head and smiled, "How's it going?" "Hey! I'm actually really glad you guys are both here. I wanted to ask you both about Patch Lane..." Tim chimed in, "Jesus, see what I'm talking about? Your girl is obsessed with this case now. Chip off the old block, am I right?" My dad laughed, "Oh I remember those days of obsessing over cases...I gotta say, retirement has treated me well." I welcome myself back into the conversation, "Okay, well maybe there's a reason to be obsessed. I just talked to the State's forensic lab and it looks like Michelle had written a code to a safe on the back of that receipt she had in her pocket. I think there's a safe somewhere on Patch Lane and it could have some answers for me." Tim took a long inhale of his cigar, held it, and slowly released. "You're gonna make me go back there...aren't you?" I flashed him a smile and offered, "Well I could go alone..." Tim agreed and my dad laughed at him and remarked, "Yeah, she does that shit to me too, Tim. Good luck with that." I added, "Tim, I also wanted to ask you about the 911 hang ups you used to respond to back when you were a rookie. What else do you remember about the tenant?" Tim thought for a moment and replied, "Well, she was certainly a pretty young girl. She had two very young children, neither could talk yet so I bet they were under two. She looked young herself too. I would suspect she was maybe around 20 years old, if that. Just had that baby face, ya know? Anywho, she was very curious about the house and the locked door in the basement. Most people hated when the cops showed up, but she always seemed... I don't know, relieved? She would mentioned how big that house was and how she always felt like someone was watching her. Even the tenants after her made similar comments. I always chalked it up to being the history of that Wentz farm, ya know?" "Tim, is there any chance that the woman we found in that basement was the same girl that lived there?" "I don't know why it would be. I always thought she moved somewhere else, because right after she left a new tenant came in. I guess I don't know exactly what happened to her..." "Do you remember her name?" "Oh God, I'm awful with names. I'll never forget a face, but I can't remember names. You know that. That's why I immediately write every person's name down that we interview. I can't even check anywhere since I never took a report for checking her house." "Could her name have been Michelle Kline?" "Honestly, I don't know. It could have, but I have no idea. It was 20 years ago." I turned to my dad, "Dad, what do you know about the tenants of that house in the late 90s?" He looked nervously down at his cigar and took a short puff. "Well, um, I remember all of the tenants were... similar." "What do you mean?" "They like, looked similar." "Dad. This is important. Just tell me what you're trying to spit out." He took a deep breath, "Well, all of the tenants were young, attractive, women. They were mostly blonde, from out of town. The type of girls that your mother would not have liked me stopping to talk to at the grocery store if you catch my drift." "Wait, are you saying you think they were prostitutes?" "No! No, I just mean they were young, pretty, and kind of ditsy. Ya know?" I wasn't sure what to make of this information, but I let Tim finish his cigar before we headed in to the station. We were scheduled off for Tuesday, but given this new information I requested and was granted to come in and work overtime to follow up. I remembered that Tim used to go to the beach and come back with old coins and whatnot that he would find using his metal detector. I asked him if he could bring his metal detector to Patch Lane with him this evening to help us find the safe. After we broke from roll call we immediately headed to Patch Lane. The scene was done being processed, so we walked through the front door. We went up to the master bedroom and tried every floor board, every inch of the wall, looking for where a safe could be hidden. We were unsuccessful. We mutually decided to try the basement before the rest of the house. We worked our way into the room where we found Michelle's body. There are some scenes you just won't forget, that was one. Her body was purple, swollen, and unrecognizable as human. The only way I even identified her as a young woman was based on the long blonde hair and the clothing she had on. Tim ran his metal detector along the cement wall and we heard: ...beep..........beep....... Tim continued to move it along to the left: ...beep...beep..beep.BEEP BEEP BEEP We looked at each other for a moment before he dropped his metal detector and we grabbed at the wall. I don't know what we were even grabbing at, but we kept feeling along the wall. As I pushed along the wall, a block moved. I grabbed my knife from my pocket and Tim grabbed his. We both shoved our knives along this cement brick and eased it out from the wall. There it was, the safe. It was an old fashioned turn dial lock, like the kind I used to have on my high school locker. Drawing on my memory, I cleared the lock before trying the combination. I spun it to the left, stopping at 34... spun it two times to the right, stopping at 16.... spun it back to the left, and stopped at 8. click I went to open the door, Tim's eyes and mine locked on the safe, and then I heard another click. But this wasn't like the unlocking of the safe, this was familiar... it was the cocking of a revolver. I turned around and was faced with the barrel of a gun. "Well, well, well. You pigs just can't stay away from my house." He had blonde hair, although the grey was taking over, and piercing blue eyes. "You're as bad as that bitch who couldn't keep her mouth shut. You know, I let her live here because she appeared cute and dumb. Her curiosity is what got her killed, just like what I'm gonna do to the two of you." The problem with facing a gun is that no matter how fast I could grab my gun, he would have been able to pull his trigger faster. However, there are other options. I slowly walked towards our killer, hands in the air, leveled with my shoulders and asked, "You're Joseph... aren't you?" "Yeah, and you're dead." As he finished his sentence, my nose was nearly touching the barrel of his gun. I grabbed the barrel, twisting it to his right, making a full 360 degree circle. I heard his pointer finger snap as it got tangled in the trigger and broke. I had his gun and pointed it right back at him, "Get on the fucking ground." He slowly raised his hands in the air and got on his right knee... and then his left. Tim ran behind Joseph and placed him in handcuffs. Once the scene under control, we called for back up. As officers arrived on scene, so did the suits. The two suits from earlier in the week came down and Tim and I recounted the evening's events. It was at this point that I realized I still didn't get to see what was inside the safe... I walked over and opened the door. I grabbed a handful of papers and pulled them out. They were photographs. Tim instantly said, "That's her! That was the girl. Like I said, I never forget a face.. just names." The suits looked at him and said "That's Michelle Kline, your body and our witness." I took a deep inhale and released it with a long sigh. "Now can you please tell us what the hell went on here?" The suits looked at each other and the older one nodded his head. "Alright. So your Mr. Joseph Muller here was into some deep stuff. Most predominantly, he ran illegal guns and sold them to some big names including the mafia. The ATF thought they got everything during their raid years ago, but there are so many hidden passages, tunnels, and root cellars throughout this property and land he kept hiding them somewhere new. Trust us, if you knew about the tunnels and passages you are literally standing on right now, you'd have nightmares for years.” The suit took a sip of his coffee and continued, “He used the tenants as a cover up and targeted tenants who he thought wouldn't ask any questions and would be fine with sending checks addressed as "CASH" to a PO Box as their monthly rent checks. What he didn't expect was for Michelle Kline to start asking questions and go digging through this house. She stumbled across one of his root cellars where he stored guns and called the feds immediately. She didn't know if she could trust the local police at that point and went straight to the ATF. ATF contacted us and said they knew Muller and knew that if he found out what she knew then she would be dead. So they sent her to us to protect her. Part of her protection meant that we needed to fake her death so that Muller wouldn't be suspicious and go looking for her. She refused initially, but when we explained to her that her children's lives were at risk too, she agreed.” He looked towards the safe and continued, “It looks like she used this safe here to store old family photographs and their birth certificates as proof of their existence. We told her she had to leave all of this behind and couldn't take any evidence with her of her previous life or her children. This all happened on October 20, 1998. It looks like she wrote down the safe code on the first piece of paper she could find and kept it after all these years. We received notification about two weeks ago that her son was diagnosed with cancer. Goddamn cancer... kid was only 22 years old and had a brain tumor. She kept on telling us she wanted to go see him and we explained to her why it just wasn't possible and we even told her he probably would not recognize her. It looked like she did her best to try to look as close to how she looked 20 years ago, including her clothing, so that he would recognize her. She probably wanted to grab these photographs to show him to prove that she was his mother and jog his memory. When she was here, Joseph must have seen her from one of his tree stands and wanted to silence her. She was one of the only witnesses willing to go forward with testimony. We just could never catch him after all these years." I responded, "Well I hope this entire case can be closed now." The suits responded, "Yeah I don't think you should be getting any more 911 hang ups from that house." I processed what they just said and asked, "Yeah, wait, who was the one making those phone calls then?" They responded, "We can't disclose that information, but you can think of them as a good Samaritan who had eyes everywhere and wanted to see justice done." We headed back to the station, where I started the never ending paper work process. Now that we were more secluded, I grabbed one of the suits and decided to tell him about my experience at the Medical Examiner's Office. I began to think he was involved and it was something they needed to know. He stopped me and said, "This is actually something the ME wanted to talk to you himself about. Hold on." The suit came back with the ME and he extended his hand to shake mine. I was confused by the gesture, but shook his hand. "Officer Barkley, I just wanted to say what a fantastic job you did on this case. I also wanted to apologize in person for how I acted and how I handled this case. I received an anonymous threat that if I performed an autopsy or did anything at all with the body, my family was going to be killed. They even knew my daughter's school and her schedule. I am so sorry... I was afraid to go to the authorities out of fear for my family. I am so glad to see that you stuck to your guns and saw this case through." Dispatch interrupted, "Dispatch to 1034." "1034, go ahead." "Are you able to respond to a 911 hang up?" "Affirmative. What's the address?" Category:Reddit Pastas